“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” -Robert F. Kennedy
When I first arrived in Vicente Guerrero, naïve and entirely unprepared for the events that would quickly ensue, I initially felt mildly disappointed. As an enterprising go-getter, hardwired for academic success, and driven to solve all the world’s problems (yes, all of them), I expected my ten weeks as a practicum student at a social justice agency in rural Mexico to be one that would afford me the opportunity to engage in work of significant consequence. I came to be challenged, to do powerful work that would produce powerful results—that was both my purpose and my goal.
Yet when I discovered that my supervisor had placed me in a department with children, I became skeptical. Working with kids that have special needs was sure to be a challenge—especially having absolutely no training in that field—but it wasn’t the challenge I came to pursue in Mexico. A passionate fourth-year student of Human Justice, I didn’t see myself gaining what I had set out to gain through this type of work. In fact, the duties of changing diapers and bathing children seemed not only irrelevant to my purposes and degree, but they almost seemed insulting. To further aggravate the situation was the fact that I wanted nothing to do with kids: didn’t want to have them, didn’t want to work with them.
I can’t pinpoint the precise moment that everything changed. I can’t recall if it was more of a slowly transformative case, or if everything turned around in such a flash that I couldn’t even see it coming. But sooner or later, my priorities changed. My goals shifted. It was no longer about being the superlative practicum student with another academic success story to add to my résumé, but rather being a compassionate human being with a personal investment in the lives of the children I worked with. When I returned to my humble trailer every night, my appearance was dishevelled but my spirits were untameable. Sure, I wasn’t the practicum student of a prestigious and well-known social justice organization, donning a neatly pressed suit and madly writing up reports from highly influential conferences. But, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. poignantly asserted, “no work is insignificant. All labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
The children I worked with for those precious ten weeks completely enriched my life. My heart was stolen by all twenty of these beautiful kids, but my heart was also repeatedly broken by witnessing both the daily and more deep-rooted struggles these children faced. The world for these children was tragically inaccessible, considering the bitter intersection of their special developmental or mobility needs with their family’s low socioeconomic status. Life, for these niños, was not easy. Their health was poor. Abuse in the children’s homes was pervasive. In Mexico, it was considered a curse to have a child with Down’s syndrome. It was an enormous burden to have a child with spina bifida or muscular dystrophy who would spend his or her entire life in a wheelchair. Basic nutrition and hygiene was not always practiced at home. The future, for most of these children, was quite bleak.
Only seeing their shocking housing conditions, hearing of their unsafe family situations, and witnessing the inevitable struggles of having a mental or physical incapacitations would be enough to want to pity these ‘poor’ children. But I quickly learned that this sympathy, however altruistic or well-intended it may be, was unnecessary. These children were too positive, too loving, too full of life to be pitied. They had a desire and a capacity to learn just like any other child. They had incredible protective instincts for each other and treated both fellow classmates and teachers with a depth of compassion I was constantly moved by. Sure, they required extra assistance and had their own ways of learning—but that did not make them ‘needy’ nor did it make them ignorant. To me, they were no less smart or less able; no, they just shone in their own unique ways. And the truth is, I learned much more from them than I (even as their teacher) could possibly reciprocate.
My work may not have been glamorous, nor was it some grand or noble contribution to the social justice field or the people of Mexico. Regardless, I attacked my work with vigour and intention, knowing that I wasn’t likely going to effect major differences or change dozens of lives, but I worked as if I could. With the “I am only one, but I am still one” mentality, I ended up finding my work to be the most rewarding I’ve ever done, no matter how small my contributions were. I was challenged to lengths as great or greater than I had with my experiences as a university student, tree planter, canoeist, or traveler.
The next step: seeking the ‘new normal.’ My experience in Mexico was truly life-changing, eye-opening, and paradigm-shifting, and I will never be the same. In some ways, I feel broken from all that I went through. But in some ways, I feel empowered, and I want to take what I have learned and push it further, take it to the next level. Allowing this to be a ‘closed chapter’ of my life would make everything I worked for, everything I went through, to be in vain. I refuse to allow this experience to deaden; I refuse to forget the people back in Mexico that I came to love. Instead, I choose to send forth a tiny ripple of hope from whatever work I do, from wherever I may be.
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